The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (30 page)

She had to concentrate hard and sing it many times. Her voice was always hoarse. Her Dad said this was because she had bawled so much when she was a baby. Her Dad would have to get up and walk with her every night when she was Ralph’s age. The only thing would hush her, he always said, was for him to beat the coal scuttle with a poker and sing ‘Dixie.’

She lay on her stomach on the cold floor and thought. Later on--when she was twenty--she would be a great world-famous composer. She would have a whole symphony orchestra and conduct all of her music herself. She would stand up on the platform in front of the big crowds of people. To conduct the orchestra she would wear either a real man’s evening suit or else a red dress spangled with rhinestones. The curtains of the stage would be red velvet and M.K. would be printed on them in gold. Mister Singer would be there, and afterward they would go out and eat fried chicken. He would admire her and count her as his very best friend. George would bring up big wreaths of flowers to the stage. It would be in New York City or else in a foreign country. Famous people would point at her. Carole Lombard and Arturo Toscanini and Admiral Byrd.

And she could play the Beethoven symphony any time she wanted to. It was a queer thing about this music she had heard last autumn. The symphony stayed inside her always and grew little by little. The reason was this: the whole symphony was in her mind. It had to be. She had heard every note, and somewhere in the back of her mind the whole of the music was still there just as it had been played. But she could do nothing to bring it all out again. Except wait and be ready for the times when suddenly a new part came to her. Wait for it to grow like leaves grow slowly on the branches of a spring oak tree.

In the inside room, along with music, there was Mister Singer.

Every afternoon as soon as she finished playing on the piano in the gym she walked down the main street past the store where he worked. From the front window she couldn’t see Mister Singer. He worked in the back, behind a curtain. But she looked at the store where he stayed every day and saw the people he knew. Then every night she waited on the front porch for him to come home. Sometimes she followed him upstairs. She sat on the bed and watched him put away his hat and undo the button on his collar and brush his hair. For some reason it was like they had a secret together. Or like they waited to tell each other things that had never been said before.

He was the only person in the inside room. A long time ago there had been others. She thought back and remembered how it was before he came. She remembered a girl way back in the sixth grade named Celeste. This girl had straight blonde hair and a turned-up nose and freckles. She wore a red-wool jumper with a white blouse. She walked pigeon-toed. Every day she brought an orange for little recess and a blue tin box of lunch for big recess. Other kids would gobble the food they had brought at little recess and then were hungry later--but not Celeste. She pulled off the crusts of her sandwiches and ate only the soft middle part. Always she had a stuffed hard boiled egg and she would hold it in her hand, mashing the yellow with her thumb so that the print of her finger was left there.

Celeste never talked to her and she never talked to Celeste.

Although that was what she wanted more than anything else.

At night she would lie awake and think about Celeste. She would plan that they were best friends and think about the time when Celeste could come home with her to eat supper and spend the night. But that never happened.

The way she felt about Celeste would never let her go up and make friends with her like she would any other person. After a year Celeste moved to another part of town and went to another school.

Then there was a boy called Buck. He was big and had pimples on his face. When she stood by him in line to march in at eight-thirty he smelled bad--like his britches needed airing. Buck did a nose dive at the principal once and was suspended. When he laughed he lifted his upper lip and shook all over. She thought about him like she had thought about Celeste. Then there was the lady who sold lottery tickets for a turkey raffle. And Miss Anglin, who taught the seventh grade.

And Carole Lombard in the movies. All of them.

But with Mister Singer there was a difference. The way she felt about him came on her slowly, and she could not think back and realize just how it happened. The other people had been ordinary, but Mister Singer was not The first day he rang the doorbell to ask about a room she had looked a long time into his face. She had opened the door and read over the card he handed her. Then she called her Mama and went back in the kitchen to tell Portia and Bubber about him. She followed him and her Mama up the stairs and watched him poke the mattress on the bed and roll up the shades to see if they worked. The day he moved she sat on the front porch banisters and watched him get out of the ten-cent taxi with his suitcase and his chessboard. Then later she listened to him thump around in his room and imagined about him. The rest came in a gradual way. So that now there was this secret feeling between them. She talked to him more than she had ever talked to a person before. And if he could have talked he would have told her many things. It was like he was some kind of a great teacher, only because he was a mute he did not teach. In the bed at night she planned about how she was an orphan and lived with Mister Singer--just the two of them in a foreign house where in the winter it would snow. Maybe in a little Switzerland town with the high glaciers and the mountains all around. Where rocks were on top of all the houses and the roofs were steep and pointed.

Or in France where the people carried home bread from the store without its being wrapped. Or in the foreign country of Norway by the gray winter ocean.

In the morning the first thing she would think of him. Along with music. When she put on her dress she wondered where she would see him that day. She used some of Etta’s perfume or a drop of vanilla so that if she met him in the hall she would smell good. She went to school late so she could see him come down the stairs on his way to work. And in the afternoon and night she never left the house if he was there.

Each new thing she learned about him was important. He kept his toothbrush and toothpaste in a glass on his table. So instead of leaving her toothbrush on the bathroom shelf she kept it in a glass, also. He didn’t like cabbage. Harry, who worked for Mister Brannon, mentioned that to her. Now she couldn’t eat cabbage either. When she learned new facts about him, or when she said something to him and he wrote a few words with his silver pencil, she had to be off by herself for a long time to think it over. When she was with him the main thought in her mind was to store up everything so that later she could live it over and remember.

But in the inside room with music and Mister Singer was not all. Many things happened in the outside room. She fell down the stairs and broke off one of her front teeth. Miss Minner gave her two bad cards in English. She lost a quarter in a vacant lot, and although she and George hunted for three days they never found it This happened: One afternoon she was studying for an English test out on the back steps. Harry began to chop wood over on his side of the fence and she hollered to him. He came and diagrammed a few sentences for her. His eyes were quick behind his horn rimmed glasses. After he explained the English to her he stood up and jerked his hands in and out the pockets of his lumberjack. Harry was always full of energy, nervous, and he had to be talking or doing something every minute. ‘You see, there’s just two things nowadays,’ he said. He liked to surprise people and sometimes she didn’t know how to answer him. ‘It’s the truth, there’s just two things ahead nowadays.’

‘What?’

‘Militant Democracy or Fascism.’

‘Don’t you like Republicans?’

‘Shucks,’ Harry said. ‘That’s not what I mean.’

He had explained all about the Fascists one afternoon. He told how the Nazis made little Jew children get down on their hands and knees and eat grass from the ground. He told about how he planned to assassinate Hitler. He had it all worked out thoroughly. He told about how there wasn’t any justice or freedom hi Fascism. He said the newspapers wrote deliberate lies and people didn’t know what was going on in the world.

The Nazis were terrible--everybody knew that. She plotted with him to kill Hitler. It would be better to have four or five people in the conspiracy so that if one missed him the others could bump him off just the same. And even if they died they would all be heroes. To be a hero was almost like being a great musician.

‘Either one or the other. And although I don’t believe in war I’m ready to fight for what I know is right’

‘Me too,’ she said. ‘I’d like to fight the Fascists. I could dress up like a boy and nobody could ever tell. Cut my hair off and all.’

It was a bright winter afternoon. The sky was blue-green and the branches of the oak trees in the back yard were black and bare against this color. The sun was warm. The day made her feel full of energy. Music was hi her mind. Just to be doing something she picked up a ten-penny nail and drove it into the steps with a few good wallops. Their Dad heard the sound of the hammer and came out in his bathrobe to stand around awhile. Under the tree there were two carpenter’s horses, and little Ralph was busy putting a rock on top of one and then carrying it over to the other one. Back and forth. He walked with his hands out to balance himself. He was bowlegged and his diapers dragged down to his knees. George was shooting marbles. Because he needed a haircut his face looked thin.

Some of his permanent teeth had already come--but they were small and blue like he had been eating blackberries. He drew a line for taw and lay on his stomach to take aim for the first hole. When their Dad went back to his watch work he carried Ralph with him. And after a while George went off into the alley by himself. Since he shot Baby he wouldn’t buddy with a single person.

‘I got to go,’ Harry said. ‘I got to be at work before six.’

‘You like it at the cafe? Do you get good things to eat free?’

‘Sure. And all kinds of folks come in the place. I like it better than any job I ever had. It pays more.’

‘I hate Mister Brannon,’ Mick said. It was true that even though he never said anything mean to her he always spoke in a rough, funny way. He must have known all along about the pack of chewing-gum she and George swiped that time. And then why would he ask her how her business was coming along--like he did up in Mister Singer’s room? Maybe he thought they took things regular. And they didn’t. They certainly did not. Only once a little water-color set from the ten-cent store. And a nickel pencil-sharpener.

‘I can’t stand Mister Brarmon.’

‘He’s all right,’ Harry said. ‘Sometimes he seems a right queer kind of person, but he’s not crabby. When you get to know him.’

‘One thing I’ve thought about,’ Mick said. ‘A boy has a better advantage like that than a girl. I mean a boy can usually get some part-time job that don’t take him out of school and leaves him time for other things. But there’s not jobs like that for girls. When a girl wants a job she has to quit school and work full time. I’d sure like to earn a couple of bucks a week like you do, but there’s just not any way.’

Harry sat on the steps and untied his shoestrings. He pulled at them until one broke. ‘A man comes to the cafe named Mr. Blount. Mr. Jake Blount. I like to listen to him. I learn a lot from the things he says when he drinks beer. He’s given me some new ideas.’

‘I know him good. He comes here every Sunday.’

Harry unlaced his shoe and pulled the broken string to even lengths so he could tie it in a bow again. ‘Listen’--he rubbed his glasses on his lumberjack in a nervous way--‘You needn’t mention to him what I said. I mean I doubt if he would remember me. He don’t talk to me. He just talks to Mr. Singer.

He might think it was funny if you--you know what I mean.’

‘O.K.’ She read between the words that he had a crush on Mister Blount and she knew how he felt. ‘I wouldn’t mention it.’

Dark came on. The moon, white like milk, showed in the blue sky and the air was cold. She could hear Ralph and George and Portia in the kitchen. The fire in the stove made the kitchen window a warm orange. There was the smell of smoke and supper.

‘You know this is something I never have told anybody,’ he said. ‘I hate to realize about it myself.’

‘What?’

‘You remember when you first began to read the newspapers and think about the things you read?’

‘Sure.’

‘I used to be a Fascist. I used to think I was. It was this way.

You know all the pictures of the people our age in Europe marching and singing songs and keeping step together. I used to think that was wonderful. All of them pledged to each other and with one leader. All of them with the same ideals and marching in step together. I didn’t worry much about what was happening to the Jewish minorities because I didn’t want to think about it. And because at the time I didn’t want to think like I was Jewish. You see, I didn’t know. I just looked at the pictures and read what it said underneath and didn’t understand. I never knew what an awful thing it was. I thought I was a Fascist. Of course later on I found out different.’

His voice was bitter against himself and kept changing from a man’s voice to a young boy’s.

‘Well, you didn’t realize then--’ she said.

‘It was a terrible transgression. A moral wrong.’

That was the way he was. Everything was either very right or very wrong--with no middle way. It was wrong for anyone under twenty to touch beer or wine or smoke a cigarette. It was a terrible sin for a person to cheat on a test, but not a sin to copy homework. It was a moral wrong for girls to wear lipstick or sun-backed dresses. It was a terrible sin to buy anything with a German or Japanese label, no matter if it cost only a nickel.

She remembered Harry back to the time when they were kids.

Once his eyes got crossed and stayed crossed for a year. He would sit out on his front steps with his hands between his knees and watch everything. Very quiet and cross-eyed. He skipped two grades in grammar school and when he was eleven he was ready for Vocational. But at Vocational when they read about the Jew in ‘Ivanhoe’ the other kids would look around at Harry and he would come home and cry. So his mother took him out of school. He stayed out for a whole year.